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Tag: Oxtail

Beefy oxtail ragu makes a delicious rich sauce for pasta. Serves 4 as a main or 6-8 as a starter. Takes a few hours to cook, but not much time to prepare. Great to make the day before needed and this also makes it easier to remove the layer of fat from the casserole before serving.

Ingredients

2 carrots

1 large onion

1 stick celery

1 leek if you have it

2 chopped cloves of garlic

1 tbsp olive oil

1kg Oxtail

1 bottle red wine

2 bay leaves

1 sprig rosemary

1 sprig sage with 2 large leaves

Method

Pre-heat your oven to 140C fan

Chop the carrot, onion, celery and leek into a fine dice.

Make a soffrito (Heat the olive oil and add the diced veg and the garlic and sweat them off in a casserole pot till cooked but not browned)

While the soffrito is cooking brown the oxtail pieces in a frying pan with some of the olive oil

Add the browned oxtail to the casserole

Add the herbs and pour in the red wine and bring to a simmer

Put the casserole in the oven and cook for 4-5 hours until there is a rich dark sauce and the oxtail is tender

Once cooked take the casserole from the oven and let it cool enough that the oxtail can be removed to a plate to strip the meat from the bones. Collect the meat in a bowl.

Remove the herb stalks

The casserole of ragu will have a decent layer of fat. Either skim this off with a large spoon and discard. Or, chill the sauce in the fridge overnight and the fat will harden and can be easily removed.

To serve, recombine the pieces of oxtail meat with the ragu in a small pot and heat

Best with a chunky pasta like pappardelle. Serve a portion of pasta in a pasta bowl, spoon over some ragu. Serve with a cheese like pecorino or ossau iraty.

Variant

This would also make a lovely ravioli. Perhaps 3 medium sized ravioli with homemade pasta per person. With a some of the ragu, with only a small amount of sauce, for the filling. Use the rest of the sauce to dress the ravioli. Perhaps some sort of creamy horseradish drizzle would lift it to something pretty special.